Abby Sunderland's big adventure

The 16-year-old sailor is safe, thank goodness. But what were her parents thinking, letting a teenager loose on the high seas?

Abby Sunderland prior to her attempt to circumnavigate the globe, which almost ended in disaster when her boat got into difficulties in a remote part of the Indian Ocean on 10 June. Photograph: Lisa Gizara/Reuters

Lock up your teenagers. With stars in their eyes and wind in their sails, a teenager will attempt almost anything, however harmful to themselves and others. It's our role as parents to stop them doing so. To tell them it's a mad idea to attempt to scale Everest, fly across America in a tiny plane, or sail solo around the world in a 40ft yacht when you've not yet reached adulthood.

That's what 16-year-old Abby Sunderland has just tried to do, foundering in the remote Indian Ocean, sending up emergency satellite beacons as the weather turned. Of course, we're all delighted she's been rescued – none more so than her parents. But she shouldn't have been out there on her own in the first place, battling the storm.

There was no purpose whatsoever to her voyage. It was The X Factor at sea – all show, no substance. Abby gave the same cliched reason for doing something so daft that we've all heard uttered tearfully a thousand times by teenage TV contestants: "I want to live my dream." But first, she needs to get a life. Abby risked hers to become a star on the ocean waves. Perhaps the quayside can be lined with Cheryl Cole and Simon Cowell for her return.

This pursuit of under-age stardom warps all sense of proportion about good parenting and child safety. We parents are told we shouldn't let our kids walk to school alone until they're at least 12, in case they have a road accident or are abducted. We're instructed to monitor strictly their access to the internet, making sure they don't spend too much time alone in front of a computer screen in case they're groomed by a paedophile. Yet, it's hailed as heroic when a teenager launches solo on the high seas to tackle 60-knot winds and 50-foot waves.

The publicity pictures of the wholesome Californian on board Wild Eyes convey none of the danger. Instead, they look as if they've been torn from the pages of an LL Bean catalogue, with Abby in pale blue, co-ordinated sailing attire, her long fair hair blowing, sun-lit, in the salt air.

But it is dangerous. And foolhardy. And downright irresponsible to let a 16-year-old loose in a 40ft yacht. A parent's job is to clip their teenager's wings and trim their sails. Abby's ambitious, pushy parents obviously felt no need to do so. When her older brother Zac left high school last year, aged 17, he sailed around the world alone. For both siblings, Laurence and Marianne Sunderland operated a system of extreme "mobile parenting", whereby parents control their kids by calling and texting almost every hour. Except that their phones were satellite-linked and, as they admitted when they tried to help Abby "troubleshoot her engine" by remote, the reception 2,000 miles east of Madagascar could be "patchy".

It's also dangerous for other people involved, whose only dream may be to return safely to their own family that night. A massive international rescue operation had to be mounted when Abby's adolescent dream hit the rocks, including diverting three ships and a Qantas passenger jet. A French fishing vessel has now altered its route and is on its way to pick up the Sunderlands' distressed daughter.

I've had some mad adventures in my travel-writing life, and crossed a few wild oceans. But I've done so as an adult, aware of the cost to me and to others. If Abby Sunderland wants to pursue her dream, let her. But let her grow up first. If it wasn't for the French fishing vessel, she might not have had the chance to.